Health IT expert John Wilbanks explores whether the desire to protect privacy is slowing research, and if opening up medical data could create a wave of health care innovation.

About John Wilbanks

John Wilbanks wants to create an open, massive, mine-able database of health and genomics data from many sources. As the chief commons officer at WeConsent.us, he focuses on the ethics and procedures necessary to turn genetic info into big data — giving researchers the potential to spot patterns that they simply cannot see up-close.

In February 2013, the U.S. government responded to a We the People petition — spearheaded by Wilbanks — by announcing a plan to open up taxpayer-funded research data and make it available for free.